Ad disclosure: this site contains affiliate links, marked (Ad). If you enquire or book through one, we earn a commission from the operator, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what our guides say.
Lodge LedgerUK ownership, honestly costed

Rights

Why holiday park site fees keep rising, and what rights you actually have

Holiday lodge owners have far less protection against site fee rises than most buyers assume. The two-limb legal test that excludes you, what government-backed guidance says a fair fee clause looks like, and the questions to ask before you sign.

Published 2026-07-26 · updated 2026-07-26 · 9 min read · all figures sourced below

Ask any group of holiday lodge or static caravan owners what they'd warn a buyer about, and the answer comes back the same: the site fee. Not the purchase price. The annual bill that arrives every autumn, a little bigger than last year's, with no obvious explanation attached.

This is the most-asked question in the niche and the least honestly answered. Here is the actual position, taken from the legislation itself, from government-backed guidance for park operators, and from what the industry's own trade bodies have admitted.

Start here: the law that protects park home owners does not protect you

Most buyers assume holiday-home owners have the same protections as residential park home owners. They don't. The reason is more specific than "it's a holiday home", so it's worth getting right.

The Mobile Homes Act 1983 gives residential park home owners a genuine statutory process. Under Schedule 1, the pitch fee can only be changed by agreement or by order of a tribunal; there's an annual review with at least 28 clear days' written notice; and there's a presumption that the fee moves no more than the Consumer Prices Index.

You get none of that, for two independent reasons. Either one alone is enough:

  1. The site is excluded. The 1983 Act only applies to a "protected site", which takes its meaning from the Caravan Sites Act 1968. Section 1(2) of that Act excludes land where the planning permission or site licence "is expressed to be granted for holiday use only", or is subject to conditions meaning "there are times of the year when no caravan may be stationed on the land for human habitation". That second limb is the one people miss: a 10 or 11-month season alone takes the site outside the Act, even without a holiday-use-only condition. Nearly every park in our South Coast guide runs 10.5 or 11 months.
  2. The home is excluded. Section 1(1) requires the person to occupy the mobile home "as his only or main residence". A holiday lodge isn't.

A note for Wales, since the statutes differ: the 1968 Act exclusion applies to "land in England". In Wales the equivalent is the Mobile Homes (Wales) Act 2013, whose section 2 excludes "a holiday site" from the definition of a regulated site, defined at section 2(3) in almost identical terms. Same outcome, different law. Anyone quoting "the Mobile Homes Act 1983" at you about a Welsh park is citing the wrong statute.

One correction to a common shorthand, including the House of Commons Library's own summary that a "permanently parked leisure home is not caught by the Act": permanence isn't the test at all. A permanently parked home on a site with residential planning permission, occupied as a main residence, is fully covered. It's the site's licence conditions and the residence question that decide it.

Why the fees go up

Two honest answers, and they don't fully agree.

The operators' answer. In October 2025 the National Caravan Council and the British Holiday & Home Parks Association issued a joint statement putting rises down to "significantly higher operating costs" (energy, wages and employer National Insurance). They also made a concession worth holding onto: during Covid many parks passed on VAT and business-rates relief to hold fees down, and the expiry of those measures "coupled with record inflation, led to above-average pitch fee adjustments in subsequent years". That is the industry conceding above-inflation rises happened.

The commercial answer. Savills' 2025 holiday parks review, a valuer's view drawn from advising on more than 75 parks, found pitch fee income made up around 36% of park turnover in 2024, and noted operators selling non-core parks "partly to help support higher pitch fees, in lieu of depressed unit sales". When caravan sales fall, pitch fees carry more of the business.

For balance, the same Savills report found "many operators increased pitch fees for 2024 by less than 5%, following significant increases in previous years". Not every rise is outrageous, but note both halves of that sentence.

At the extreme, Grant Thornton's 2025 sector review reports claims (its own wording is "claims have been made", and "supposedly") that one owner's fee went from £2,795 in 2022 to £4,100 in 2024, a 46% rise in two years. The same piece notes around 1,200 owners in the Holiday Park Action Group beginning legal action over pitch fee rises and value claims. Treat those as reported allegations, not findings of fact. The scale still tells you something.

Published 2026 ranges for context: £3,250 to £12,495 at Parkdean Resorts and £4,770 to over £10,000 at Haven.

What a fair fee clause looks like

Business Companion is the government-backed guidance service run by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute with the Department for Business and Trade. Its guidance for holiday parks (updated June 2026) tells operators what a lawful pitch fee variation term must do:

  • It must "set out very clearly what changes may be made", and before the contract is signed the park must detail how changes will take place, the reasons, and the method for calculating the increase.
  • "Fairness is more likely to be achieved if you use an external index to set the new price". It names CPI as the example.
  • Terms must describe how you can challenge a rise, how the park will review it, and how you can take a complaint to court if it refuses.
  • Terms should make clear that owners who don't accept a new pitch fee may terminate without being worse off.
  • Parks must not force you into alternative dispute resolution before court.

So while there's no statutory ceiling on your fee, there is a published standard for what a fair clause looks like. A discretionary "we may increase fees as we see fit" clause falls well short of it, and that's your argument.

The trade bodies say much the same: increases "must always be communicated openly... giving reasons, notice of the change and ensuring that the business deals fairly with queries."

The general consumer law behind that

Unfair contract terms (Consumer Rights Act 2015, Part 2). Terms must be transparent and fair. The "grey list" of potentially unfair terms specifically covers a trader altering terms unilaterally without a valid reason specified in the contract. If a court finds a term unfair it isn't binding on you, and where a term could mean two things the reading favouring the consumer usually wins.

The catch, and it matters here: terms setting the price are exempt from the fairness test provided they are transparent and prominent. A clear, prominent, index-linked clause is hard to attack. A vague or buried one is a much better target, which is exactly why the transparency standard above is your leverage.

Misrepresentation Act 1967. If a false pre-contract claim induced you to buy (the classic being that you could live there year-round), a court can unwind the contract and award damages.

Unfair trading. Note that the Commons Library briefing on this subject (December 2023) cites the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Those were revoked on 6 April 2025 and replaced by Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Protection is broadly equivalent, but enforcement is stronger: the Competition and Markets Authority can now act directly rather than only through the courts.

Enforcement sits with local authority Trading Standards, with the CMA intervening in serious cases. One realistic limit: the CMA cannot take up an individual's case.

The pressure that makes this hard

Owners accept rises they think are unfair for a reason. Relocating a static is expensive (disconnection and removal alone has been quoted at £300 to £3,500 before transport), and many parks impose age limits, often around ten years, regardless of condition. Mid-licence, your bargaining position is weak.

Watch promotional fee holidays, too. Parkdean's current ownership terms give free pitch fees for the 2026 season (or 2026 and 2027 on some offers), then state plainly that customers "will be responsible for full pitch fees for the 2027 season onwards at the then current rates". The cliff is real, and the offer may not transfer if you sell privately.

There is no statutory regulator for holiday parks. The NCC and BH&HPA are trade associations, though the NCC operates a consumer code of practice its members must meet. And on the investment question, the BH&HPA's own public position is worth quoting to any salesperson: buying a holiday caravan or lodge is "a long-term lifestyle purchase, not a financial investment", whose "value will fall over time with the greatest reduction coming in the short term".

What to actually do

Before you buy. This is where all your leverage sits:

  1. Ask for the actual site fee for each of the last five years at that park, in writing. Not the policy. The numbers.
  2. Read the fee-increase clause and check it against the Business Companion standard: does it name an external index, give the calculation method, and set out how you challenge a rise? If it just says the park may increase fees, that's the gap.
  3. Get the full list of compulsory charges: rates, water, insurance, safety checks, and anything you must buy through the park.
  4. Ask what disconnection and removal would cost if you left.
  5. Ask the age limit for units, and what happens when the licence expires.
  6. If there's a fee-free promotional period, ask what year full fees start and whether the offer survives a private sale.

If you already own and face a rise you think is unfair: put it in writing to the park, referencing the transparency standard above. Then Citizens Advice, free, on 0808 223 1133. They can refer serious cases to Trading Standards. Check whether your home insurance includes legal expenses cover before paying for advice. If the park is an NCC member, its code of practice is another route. Remember the guidance says you shouldn't be forced into ADR before court.

None of this is a reason not to buy. Plenty of people own holiday lodges and love them. It is a reason to buy with the fee schedule in your hand rather than the brochure, and to model a few years of increases in our ownership cost calculator before you sign.

The best time to ask these questions is on a park visit, in person, before you have any money at stake.

Sources